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Auckland mayor Phil Goff says he's on the warpath about illegal roadside rubbish dumping and wants a strict-liability rule for the owners of vehicles involved.

He also wants Auckland Council staff to increase the low number of prosecutions and for the public to dob in dumpers.

Goff has asked officials to explore changes to make owners of vehicles involved with dumping rubbish strictly liable, as is the case with speed camera fines when the owner is unable to identify who was driving at the time.

I’ve had a gutsful of those who think they can just dump their rubbish on the side of the road instead of using...

It's been happening for as long as he can remember, but this was the worst he'd seen.

"It was an industrial tip, not backyard rubbish," he said.

"I had a closer look and saw there were serial numbers on the barrels."

Council officers and police are investigating and Goff thinks there is a good chance of tracing the culprits. A nearby CCTV camera had provided a lead that was being followed, he said.

Goff wants the offenders made an example of and said that because of the nature of the dumping at Ardmore charges could be brought under the Resource Management Act which carries maximum penalties of a fine of $300,000 and two years' jail.

Goff said there is reason to suspect the same people may be responsible for dumping 28 barrels - some containing used oil - on Piha Rd on January 2.

"You have got to have the sanction and you have got to have a realistic ability to prosecute and make an example of some of the people. That's why I'm asking on my Facebook page for people to tell us if you have information. Tell us if you see rubbish dumped … if you get a photo of the car and registration number, great, that's the evidential information we need to prosecute."

Goff acknowledged that prosecutions for roadside rubbish dumping are few and far between.

In the past year, only two were brought under the Litter Act 1979, which provides for fines of up to $30,000 for a company or $5000 for an individual, while Auckland Council imposed a total of $20,000 of instant fines, ranging from $100 to $400 for first offenders.

"One of the problems with prosecutions is they tend to be expensive, the fines are often too low and there are difficulties on the evidential side."

It cost ratepayers $1 million a year to collect more than 1300 tonnes of illegally-dumped rubbish.

One of the hotspots that saw an increase over the holidays was rural Mangere, north of the airport where warehouses are pushing into the countryside.

This month a truckload of household rubbish was dumped on Renton Rd. It included a sofa, a big TV that someone has stripped of saleable metal, and huge plastic containers of the kind used to hold chemicals.

Auckland Council logged 42 illegal dumping jobs for this road and adjacent Ihumatao and Oruarangi roads between July and December 2017 but said some may have been duplicate jobs for the same incidents.

Each week there is a fresh dump on these roads. It was a bane in the life of Trevor Ellett, a lifelong resident of Ihumatao Rd near the historic stonefields, until his death last year, aged 96.

He went to war with the council, pushing it to take action where possible, his daughter Jill Ellett, told the Herald. He would fossick through the rubbish for clues, maybe correspondence bearing an address.